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Blindness
"There's a bit of blindness in all of us." ''- Tagline ' Blindness''' is an anthology album, a compilation, a portfolio of works depicting the lives of an ambiguous but public young group known as the Outsiders, created by Hosea Douglas. The primary theme of the anthology is the concept of reality, and what can come out of it. The people are real, the stories are real. the emotions are especially real. The project is expressed and presented in many forms of art and media: photo-editing, vintage photography, short films, and sketches, just to name a few. The story itself is told within the artwork and through 'episodes', with each year being a volume or a book, containing up to five chapters of that story. Origins The title, "Blindness", was better suited for shortening a melancholic, human perspective look at life. Confusion and conflict, and maybe even trust and faith, can all come from blindness at times. Hosea named it such for that reason, and finds it very fitting, hoping followers can agree. The reasons behind creating the project, however, were a different story. The album was not for profitable purposes, but simply for entertainment. : "Look, a lot of people give high school either a good or a bad wrap. My mom, for example, gave it a bad rap. And a lot of television shows do as well, they make it seem so dramatic and such. So I thought to myself, maybe I should see for myself. But it became more than keeping track of my time in high school. It became how I would express myself within that time frame. I knew if I just kept it to pictures and graphics, this would just be a scrapbook. I wanted there to be a story behind every graphic I made, every picture I took. Who knows? One day, I might forget it. But then I'd have my monthly records to refresh my memory." - H. Douglas Story and Theme The story is told within episodes, with every 22 episodes making a full chapter. Putting together all the chapters that make up one school year creates a volume. The initial plan is for the series to drag from the freshman year at high school all the way to senior year, making this a four-volume plan. But seeing that the first volume, being the freshman year, took five chapters to explain in detail, the entire series would be estimated to add up to twenty chapters. For this reason, by the time the sophomore volume finishes, that will end Part I of the series, with Part II continuing into the junior and senior years. Every chapter has its own theme or moral in life. For example, the first chapter's theme is independence, as the characters are just entering high school for the first time, and this can be considered a fresh start if you knew all the backstory, but considering this was a new beginning, they had to establish their own identity: who they were, what they wanted, what they were afraid of, and so on. As the series progresses, the themes get thicker, and they all tie together in the end. Characters There is a large group of characters involved with the project, aside from the Outsiders. Some members are even left anonymous, at their own request. But even so, the main storylines revolve around the Outsiders, usually from the creator's point of view. Volume I introduced Hosea Douglas, Crystal Riley, Jack Godwin, Jade Montz, Rayce Murff, Michael Powell, Katie Trotter, Daniel Thevis, Steven Scherer, and Katie Higginbotham, most of the founding members of the Outsiders. The first volume settled the group together, and they learned about each other, and grew to treat each other a lot like family. However, by the end of it all, they had to say goodbye to their senior friends, Jack and Kenzie. Volume II introduced Dawn Guillory, Angela Phelps, Jamie Lloyd, Gabrielle Frye, Dylan Spisak, and Brandon Clancy, who were known in the previous volume, but have now become members. Most of the veteran members return even stronger than ever, and this year truly marks the rising of the Outsiders. Volume III introduced Lexi Desoto, James Baker, Stephanie Andrew, and Carla Kleinpeter, all newcomers to the school (aside from Stephanie). What starts as a search for the next generation of Outsiders becomes a settlement on who will be a part of the group while it exists at Comeaux. The last two chapters chronicle the fall of the Outsiders. Volume IV introduced Jacob Kleinpeter, the only newcomer to the school that is tolerable by the former group's standards. This stage of the story deconstructs the foundation of the project by removing the Outsiders from the formula and looking at the main characters as their own people going forward. Trivia *Before creating Blindness, Hosea did attempt another project, but not nearly as complex as Blindness was. He had made a concept album for a former girlfriend, but cancelled it after figuring it "wasn't worth continuing a love story if there's no love interest." After he started dating Crystal, he stuck to keeping Blindness a universal concept album about life, rather than only love. *Until chapter seven of Part I, the project's story was told by season rather than by chapter. This concept changed after confusion arose over whether this story was told in more of a literary sense or a cinematic sense. Category:Mainpage